Rainforest Restitution

Ralph Levinson: Hi, I'm Ralph Levinson, Health Sciences Professor Emeritus at UCLA.

Luc Lewitanski: And I'm Luc Lewitanski, a French journalist covering technology, politics, and power.

Ralph Levinson: Welcome to Your Planet, Your Health, where we share stories about the environment without falling prey to despair. In these conversations, we explore the knowledge and tools we can use to be good earthlings. So Luc, let's talk about some good news. At least let's start by talking. Ooh, I like good news. I got some good news for you. On August 8th, 2023, the Brazilian government announced that in July, they cleared 60% less rainforest than the previous July.

Luc Lewitanski: So the numbers for deforestation fell massively between 2022 and 2023 in the Amazon rainforest, a large part of which is in Brazil.

Ralph Levinson: That's right. 60% of the rainforest is in Brazil. There's a smattering in some other countries, particularly Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, but also Guiana and Suriname. Bolivia, Venezuela. Yes. So this was really good news. Let's talk a moment about rainforest.

Luc Lewitanski: Yeah. Why is this important? Why do we care about the rainforest? I mean, like, it's nice, it's beautiful, it's got lots of animals and trees. But why is it important from a climate lens?

Ralph Levinson: Well, animals and trees are important in their own right. Of course. And they really do supply a local ecology that's vibrant and that we can appreciate. But let's look through a climate lens. You know, people talk about planting trees because trees suck in CO2, carbon dioxide, a long-lived greenhouse gas, as we all know. And they store it. They store it as tree.

Luc Lewitanski: I'm sorry. I don't understand what you said. They store it as tree?

Ralph Levinson: Yeah. Yeah. Basically, you turn that carbon dioxide into tree. What happens in photosynthesis is you take carbon dioxide and water and you mix them together and you end up with carbohydrates that can then be made into proteins and other chemicals and build a tree. So the CO2, there's more that goes into a tree than the CO2, but part of a good deal of the carbon in a tree is sucked out of the air.

Luc Lewitanski: So much like how when we breathe, we inhale oxygen and exhale CO2, trees.

Ralph Levinson: Well they kind of do the reverse. Photosynthesis is such a beautifully balanced, complex system. The trees and us evolve together and we are basically relying on each other to create this atmosphere and to use it to live. It is a kind of breathing. It's a kind of taking in and putting back out.

Luc Lewitanski: And it happens to be very advantageous for us because it's taking in CO2 and as a result, there's more oxygen out there. So it's sort of doubly beneficial.

Ralph Levinson: It's a win-win. Absolutely. Absolutely. And more than that, it's also very important in the water cycle because they transpire water. And you might say, well, that's getting rid of water. Except when you have the kind of concentrations that you have in a rainforest, 80% of the water that these trees put out end up coming back to the rainforest as rain.

They create their own rain. That's why it's got that name. Well that's part of it. Part of it, at least the rain.

That's part of it. I mean, there's a lot of rain anyway in those areas for various reasons. But they do create their own rain. They're incredibly important for the water cycle, they being the trees, the rainforest, because the roots hold in water and they in effect filter and cleanse the water. So it's just an incredible system that benefits not only the ecology, but also the human ecology and economy. The idea that it's not so bad to just chop down a tree, you could just plant another one. Well, it's good to replant another one, but it's secondary.

You don't have a whole ecology. When you take down a tree and make a field and you then plow in soybeans, when you plow that ground, it releases water. It just dries out. Also it absorbs heat better. The ground does when it doesn't have the cover of the forest canopy.

So they've done experiments, they've actually measured it. When you have a field, the air, the field is drier and hotter. The air, the atmosphere is warmer by the field. And this is a propensity for droughts and fires.

Luc Lewitanski: And so locally, obviously, this causes massive devastation for the local biodiversity, which impacts food sources for people who live in the area. But again, thinking from our sort of planetary lens, this also, I mean, people think about the rainforest as being very impactful for the atmosphere of the earth as a whole. Right?

Ralph Levinson: Oh, yeah, without question. I mean, this CO2 is coming from somewhere. You know, it's coming from the atmosphere and this atmosphere is very well mixed. You know, it's not a question that, you know, it just affects the local CO2, but nowhere else.

Luc Lewitanski: Well, CO2 is a planetary system. Exactly. There's no such thing as only affecting the CO2 in the rainforest. The CO2 in the planet is a system and any CO2 that gets sucked in, as you say, it's produced somewhere, it was actually produced in the north and it gets sucked in.

Ralph Levinson: No, that's absolute. And a matter of fact, in Brazil, they say this deforestation is about half of their greenhouse gas production because not only did the deforestation itself, which often means burning the forest, which of course releases CO2, all that CO2. I was talking about that stored in the tree. You burn a tree, it's back up in the atmosphere.

Luc Lewitanski: Actually, this relationship was described by the climate scientist, Steven Schneider. He was a researcher at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research and in 1981, he was interviewed as part of a television program, a documentary looking at the risks of climate change and he outlined this relationship in a manner quite similar to the way you just did. And so I led this into Steven Schneider.

Steven Schneider: Remember that coal and oil and gas is dead and compressed plant matter from hundreds of years ago. Well, a tree trunk is compressed carbon dioxide, if you will. It just hasn't been squeezed yet into fossil fuel form. So if you go into a forest, which took 50 or 100 years to build and you chop it down and you burn all the wood now, you're getting back in a matter of hours, a CO2 that took many decades to turn into the hydrocarbons of that wood.

Luc Lewitanski: And so here we just had Steven Schneider in 1981 talking about deforestation's devastating impacts and obviously sometimes lightning strikes or sometimes there are brush fires. These are sometimes natural occurrences, but these fires in Brazil, in the rainforest, they aren't accidents, are they?

Ralph Levinson: And so they're doing it on purpose. We know there's been a lot of that not on purpose, but this is when they're doing it on purpose.

Luc Lewitanski: They're doing it on purpose because they want to make the land exploitable. Exactly. It's hard to drill for oil when there are so many trees and plants and vegetation. Oh, it would be so much easier if you just burn the whole thing down and then drill baby drill.

Ralph Levinson: And it's good money to plant soybeans that will feed cows. And soybeans aren't a bad crop. I have nothing against soybeans. But the fact is, when you turn a rainforest into a field of soybeans, you're sucking down a lot less CO2. You're drying out the land. You are using gasoline or diesel in your machines that are going to harvest the soybeans. So it produces a lot of greenhouse gases.

Luc Lewitanski: And you're also cutting out part of, I mean, this is why people are worried about destroying the rainforest. Like ultimately that soybean crop is not absorbing CO2 and releasing oxygen.

Ralph Levinson: Well, a little bit because it does do photosynthesis. It does it, but it's just at a much lower level.

Luc Lewitanski: Yeah, I believe it's about 50 times less effective at sucking up carbon, right? That sort of scale.

Ralph Levinson: It's a huge difference. Think of a few, you know, a thin layer of soybeans versus a canopy of luscious foliage. So it's a big deal that they're making progress. And part of the way they've made progress is the people of Brazil had an election back last November 2022. They got rid of a guy, Bolsonaro, who they voted him out and they voted in Lula da Silva. Lula da Silva, who made a pledge.

Luc Lewitanski: I mean, he started with a bang. The first things he did when he took office was make a big splash of announcements about the Amazon rainforest. He had campaigned partially on undoing the damage of his predecessor.

Absolutely. But of course, it takes a while for the changes to be seen if you're looking at the actual number of trees that were cut. And so obviously there still was some deforestation done in early 2023. In July 2022, we're talking about 1500 square kilometers lost of the rainforest. That's about 600 square miles versus in July 2023 was only 500.

Ralph Levinson: So about a third 200 square miles lost. I say only. I mean, that's still not ideal. It's still not ideal. But if you look at the last three months, it's a steady downward trend from May through July. Whereas the previous year, it was a steady upward trend.

So we this is just unequivocal. Lula was helped a lot by European Union rules. If the bad guys can't sell their ill begotten products illegally obtained by illegal deforestation, you know, whether it's lumber or whether it's soybeans, then a lot of the profit motive goes away. And the European rules were apparently helpful in that way. What's really important is a lot of this stuff is illegal.

So you have to have the will to enforce the laws and you have to know they're being broken. And one of the great tools that has come out is satellite imaging. You could tell when a part of the rainforest, even a fairly relatively small area, is being burned down.

Luc Lewitanski: But I think we have to single out how uniquely invested in deforestation Bolsonaro was. It's part of a reason why this reversal of this trend is so encouraging because in the previous year, he had increased deforestation by 150 percent. Overall, he increased it by about 75 percent.

Ralph Levinson: He was definitely on an upward trend and he made, I'm sure, a lot of people very wealthy and really hurt a lot of the local indigenous peoples and other people who live in the Amazon and rely on the resources there. So under Bolsonaro, the winners were big industry and organized crime. So this is all good news.

And part of the reason this is so good is because people are really worried about tipping points. There's going to be some point where the rainforest can't be brought back. And of course, it's not just Brazil and other countries have been active as well.

But Brazil having the most rainforest. And as you pointed out, Lula, he put himself on the line. He said, look, I'm going to do this and he has been doing it. And I think we really have to be grateful.

Luc Lewitanski: He used his political capital at the start of his new term in January 2023 to make a bunch of big announcements about safeguarding the rainforest, trying to honor his campaign promise and undo the damage of his predecessor.

And one of the main ways in which this took shape is that he wanted to organize a conference of the rainforest countries, which is something that has happened before, but not exactly been a common occurrence. I think you told me you've seen the last one was 14 years ago.

Ralph Levinson: Yes, I think that's what I read. The last one of this particular organization was 14 years ago. And this conference of rainforest countries, they had a summit when this announcement was made. It was on August 8th and 9th. And they came together to talk about these issues.

Luc Lewitanski: So Lula convened a bunch of countries who contain portions of the rainforest. Obviously 60 percent of the rainforest is in Brazil. So most of it is there, but other countries have some claim to it. And basically Lula is using his political capital and thinking like, we have something to offer to the world here. So he wanted to resurrect this conference, which has happened three or four times.

It's not exactly been a regular occurrence, right? But the conference is called the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, Acto for short. And they discuss what sort of political power can they yield as a unit, because they all have parts of this great resource for humanity, which is the Amazon rainforest. And so as you point out, the latest meeting after 14 years of laying fallow just was convened by Lula in Belam in August 8th, 2023. And this is the occasion at which we got this great figure, this big splashy media PR person, like, look how great we're doing. We're much better than the previous.

We're destroying the rainforest, much less. Like, great. And so as part of the speeches during this Belam conference of Amazon rainforest countries, Lula, who was at Honcho putting this together, the Brazilian president we've been talking about, he had some beautiful quotes talking about how to look at the Amazon. And he said, That's very poetic.

I mean, that's delightful. And he was thinking actually, thinking about the weight of the Amazon in diplomatic relations for these countries, sort of thinking on a foreign policy stage. And so Lula said that the Amazon will become a passport for South American countries to establish a new way of interacting with the world. So he's really thinking, here is a tool that we can use. And yet some of his critics accuse him, perhaps of having this very flowery language, these beautiful metaphors, but perhaps that his policies don't necessarily live up to the statement of good intentions that was released at the conference.

Ralph Levinson: There are legitimate criticisms, and it's not only from other politicians, which we'll get into, but there's also was an article in Nature, the very prestigious scientific journal, that highlighted some criticisms of Lula's environmental progress on August 10th. So at the end of this meeting, Nature, the very prestigious science journal, published an article, How is Brazil's president Lula doing on climate?

Experts rate his performance. And their subheading is deforestation is dropped, but researchers who spoke to Nature say he needs to take a stronger stance on fossil fuels. For example, Luiz Marquez, a historian at the National Center for Research on Energy and Materials in Brazil, said that he thought Lula's administration lacked a clarity on energy policies, particularly when they are aligned with environmental protection. So he thought he was talking very specifically here about exploratory oil wells near the mouth of the Amazon River. That is concerned because there's a nearby reef system, and that could be impacted.

Luc Lewitanski: So Luiz Marquez criticized the Lula administration on their energy policies, specifically drawing attention to the state-owned energy firm Petrobras, right, which has proposed drilling exploratory oil wells near the mouth of the Amazon River. So like this could threaten the ecosystem, right? We know what happens with drilling.

Ralph Levinson: As they put it when they discussed his comments, they wondered why Lula would even entertain tapping into new fossil fuel reserves, especially in such a risky area, if he cares so much about this Amazon system.

Luc Lewitanski: And the irony is that it's not like his hands are tied in this instance, because the oil company proposing these drillings in the mouth of the Amazon is owned by the state.

So he has power over it. He could definitely tell them to curtail this. This is where I think some other well-leaders saw an incongruity, perhaps some level of hypocrisy, or at least saying that of course Lula's goals are laudable, and it's great to get everyone on the same page, although there were no hard commitments in the Bellum Declaration in the end of the day. So that's also part of the idea that, well, it's a statement of good intentions, and it's great to get everybody on the same page and talk about these good feelings, but it's hard to imagine that it can be a stepping stone to more concrete action unless they're more organized. And this was precisely the reason that Gustavo Petro dodged the photo op at the end of the conference.

He decided he doesn't want to be a part of this. And so even on the diplomacy standpoint, part of the reason that you have these conferences is you want to get a big photo opportunity at the end with all the well leaders smiling together and sort of all demonstrating unity on this action. And I mean, it wasn't a complete win, even on the diplomatic front for Lula. I mean, Venezuela didn't show up.

That's one thing. And ironically, a month before Lula was elected, Colombia was holding elections and they elected someone who could arguably be described as being even to the left of Lula de Silva. So this guy, Gustavo Petro, recently elected in August 2022, president of Colombia. He didn't show up for the photo.

He decided like, no, I don't want to be a part of this. Like, you guys aren't really putting your money where your mouth is. And if we're meeting here, I would like this to be more substantive. So instead of just kind of like trying to rephrase his claims, let's kind of introduce you a little bit to this man, Gustavo Petro.

Ralph Levinson: Gustavo Petro's election in August 2022 was a turning point. I mean, this was a very interesting opportunity. We discovered that he used his political capital at this venue to speak some truth to power and highlight some uncomfortable truths.

And so let's let's delve in. I picked a couple of quotes from actually his introduction on the world stage was that, as is the case with many world leaders, at the UN General Assembly, he did a big speech. And actually, he substantially spoke about the Amazon rainforest in his introduction on the world stage. So here are a couple of other things he said. He spoke about the jungle that tries to save us, us being humanity, is being destroyed. And he's addressing fellow world leaders.

Imagine, you know, you've got got all the big guns there later in front of you. And he's infecting. He's saying, you are only interested in my country to spray poison on our jungles.

You take our men to jail and you put our women in exclusion. You are not interested in educating children, but in killing the jungle and extracting coal and oil from its entrails. The sponge that absorbs the poison is useless.

They prefer to throw more poison into the atmosphere. So we spoke about this metaphor, thinking about the Amazon rainforest as the earth's lung, because it takes in CO2 and brings out oxygen for us.

Ralph Levinson: But here you can see, yeah, he's talking about it as a sponge, but it's the same kind of thing. It's the same kind of analogy.

Luc Lewitanski: It's the same sort of idea. It's a carbon sponge that speaks the language difference of transiting it in literal terms. But I think that's interesting. And so he speaks about how governments, the government said he's speaking to, turn their backs to the evidence that he says, science set the alarm bells ringing and we stopped listening to it. And I mean, I think there's a lot there. I think he's really talking about how there's a failure of humanity in the Amazon rainforest.

It's an enormous deadly machinery that can extinguish humanity. And so he was really putting the question of the Amazon rainforest and safeguarding it as an existential question for our species. And so this is obviously why he emphasized this so much in his first speech at the UN. But now that he's being invited at the conference of Amazon rainforest countries, you know, in Belem, this was his opportunity to really sort of lay out his philosophy for these ideas. And so here are a few quotes from his speeches at the Belem conference that might shine light onto why he wasn't interested in signing the declaration or lending his legitimacy to this process. So let's talk about what his objections were. He says, politics is imprisoned by the economic interests that derive from fossil capital, which is why science despairs.

Going back to this idea of politics in opposition to science and the idea that we stop listening to the evidence. Now we described him as being to the left of Lula. So he's obviously saying like, I would expect, you know, he's disappointed in the left. He's saying, I expect this from the right wingers, you know, around the world, they've, they, they don't care about science.

They fascism is actively been a process of trying to deny science. This is, this is coherent. He says this works. But he really says he's disappointed that leftists or people who are left of center like Lula aren't being more forceful on this issue of the climate. He says basically that there's another kind of denialism on the left. He talks about a denialism that allows us to postpone decisions. And so his example is actually exactly referring to what critics of Lula have talked about. He says, and I quote, letting the jungle be exploited for hydrocarbons might not be a total contradiction, but apparently we're not even going to mention it in the declaration. If the jungle produces oil, then you are killing humanity in a double effect because the rainforest can no longer operate as a sponge. There you have that metaphor again.

Ralph Levinson: Now absolutely. And these are excellent criticisms. There was a lot of good that came out of the declaration at the end of this meeting. It speaks a lot about taking care of indigenous people. It talks about one health, which is much like planetary health, how we have to take care of not only the environment, but the people. But, but they didn't come up with hard targets for deforestation.

That's a big deal. You can't, you know, enforce rules without parameters. Exactly.

Right. You can't, you know, you can't just say, hey, I have a feeling that that's enough or too much or too little. You have to have at least minimal targets and they couldn't come to that. Now, there was a certain amount of finger pointing going on, but it's a big gap. It's a big loss not to have those. Yeah.

Luc Lewitanski: Even compared to Lula's aims. But here we see that the critique from the Colombian president Gustavo Petro is going further than that. He's saying, even if we take your nice intentions and your nice sentiments, you know, he says, I'm not sure that they're going to happen. But even if you did this, like, if you're still going to be drilling oil next to it, you're not actually doing the climate positive thing that you are claiming to do. And therefore you cannot have diplomatic leverage as a result of this because you're just being as much of a polluter as anyone else. And then he even takes issue with the premise of saying that, like, somehow deforestation would be enough. I think we can agree with that.

You know, he says that science tells us that even if we arborized everywhere, that is to say, we planted trees over the entire surface of the earth, it would not be successful to absorb the annual CO2 emissions. I think this is on our website.

Ralph Levinson: It is on our website. These great statistics showing how much land you would have to use. And the point is that, well, there's a lot of land we could use, but there's a lot of land when we use that land, you know, there's opportunities missed to say, grow food. And it's also maybe in areas that don't support trees. A lot of tree planting efforts don't even make it. But even if we took every possible acre, we still would barely, you know, make more than a slight change. And it takes energy to plant trees. This is why I said before that it's better not to cut a forest down than it is to plant trees.

But still, he's right. That, I remember hearing years ago, some people just kind of starry eyed, you know, people, oh, all we have to do, trees will save us. Well, they're great. Plant trees, it's great, it's great. But be careful and don't expect it to solve your problems.

Luc Lewitanski: Exactly. It's not a beel and all solution. Even the most maximalist interpretation of planting trees that we could think of. As you said, they would make a dent. And it's not to say that we shouldn't do this. Obviously, we've just explained the great positive effects of photosynthesis and how having trees in our immediate environment makes it nicer to breathe. And for the entire atmosphere sets off some of the impacts of climate catastrophe. But here we see Gustavo Petro saying like, it's not sufficient to absorb the massive amounts of CO2 that we're putting out there. He's absolutely right.

So then the question follows. He says, the reason why we're putting out so much CO2 as a species is not evenly distributed. He says, the richer you are, the more you pollute. And so following this logic, quoting him, he says, it is the North's responsibility to leave fossil capital behind. And it is our responsibility, speaking as the South, the rainforest countries, it is our responsibility to protect the sponge.

So he says, everyone has their role to do, you know, because it's not saying you do either or you have to both try to put out more oxygen out there. And you have to limit the amount of CO2 to the atmosphere. You want to suck up some CO2 with the trees. But if you don't put out so much CO2 in the first place, for instance, by not drilling into the Amazon River, that probably would limit the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in the first place. I mean, it wouldn't probably, it would undoubtedly lead to less pollution, less CO2 in the atmosphere. So if your goal is to have the Amazon suck up CO2, well, maybe if you weren't putting out so much CO2 in the first place, you would be even more effective with dealing with the CO2 that's here.

You know, these things work in conjunction is just to say, we cannot just do deforestation. That's his critique of this conference. He's saying, if you're going to be talking about climate impacts in the Amazon, well, let's make sure that the net balance of what's happening here is actually helping the climate. Otherwise, we're just as hypocritical as those right-wingers who don't care about science as he talks about.

Ralph Levinson: And I think that last part is the most important. So he made really good points. It's easy for people who don't want to think too hard to just sort of say, no, this is just a guy going off. He, it was very thoughtful. And he's just right.

Luc Lewitanski: He came at this very, I think I showed you the speech and one of your first takeaways was how calm he is. He's very collected. This is not, you know, I said it's an invective because he does take the world leaders that he's speaking to to toss because he thinks there's a moral opportunity.

Ralph Levinson: No, if you watch the speech, he's just sitting there talking like, guys, this is how it is. And he's right. You know, there's, there's, this brings up, of course, a lot of issues. One of the things Lula asked for was more money from the North. And there's a huge responsibility that the North has. There's a large justice issue here.

Luc Lewitanski: I mean, the industrial revolution was massively disproportionately done by people in the North. This is back to the framing of the North and South and that the countries in the right around the rainforest are simply responsible for having put out a lot less CO2 than us in the North. That's, that's an undeniable fact. Even goes back, you know, Lula, we can say, yes, his, his declaration was perhaps not everything that he wished for. And certainly not everything that Gustavo Petro, the Colombian president wanted. But Lula even said, as part of his big speech to close off the conference, he talked about how for two centuries industrialized nations filled the world's atmosphere with pollution. And now they need to pay their bit to restore part of that, which was wrecked by their pollution. You know, there's some logic here about thinking about, you know, the North is responsible for this.

Ralph Levinson: It's totally logic and it's totally fair. It's, it's absolutely.

Luc Lewitanski: But I think this goes back to the critique of the Colombian president because he's saying, okay, these are nice statements. But how do you actually get to create that political will? How can you be taken seriously by countries in the world if you're just coming out here and making statements? So he's very clearly saying like, he has concrete proposals. He's saying like, we've launched a proposal that's part of the declaration. He's saying, you know, what you're doing Lula, it's fine. Like it's, it's not a bad thing. But Gustavo Petro says, and I'm quoting, we cannot take this on either with the gifts of the North, nor with our own economic capacities.

So he's saying that, you know, it's all fine. Well, you can beg as much as you want to, but you're not going to get to the amount of money that you need for it to not be more attractive for these countries to destroy the rainforest. And so as you said, there's one level on the regulatory side where you can say, well, make it very, you know, sanctions, make it punitive to buy lumber from the rainforest.

But ultimately, these things can sort of be scattered and it's possible to find a buyer somewhere, usually. Or at least it's going to be very difficult to enforce that level of global cooperation. But it's certainly a solution. And another solution would be to ease up the financial burden on South American countries.

If you think about the massive amount of debt that these countries, which is part of the reason that they are forced to such desperate economic measures. So this is, this is where Pedro's thinking is, it's got a very sort of interesting turn. He says, what if we ask the Western countries to forgive our debts in exchange for protecting the rainforest, for taking this climate action? And he says, you can't do that unilaterally. You can't do it country by country because then the risk-creating agencies will always say, oh, this country is defaulting on their debt.

They're not paying debt. Oh, we can't do that. So this is why he says, this is why we're all here together. This is what we could be doing. And he calls for a new worldwide Marshall plan. He says this debt forgiveness is essentially a gift that could be given to ease up the financial burden on the South American rainforest countries.

Ralph Levinson: I think you make a good point. Business as usual is not working.

Luc Lewitanski: And so this is why he says, like, you're not going to get this done with another declaration, with a conference. Even though it's good that this conference is happening and it hasn't happened in so long, like he couches all that. But he says, we need to actually build some institutions here. You know, look at, look at what happened, you know, the EU, they're able to put a bunch of national countries to.

I mean, it hasn't been easy and it has had fits and starts. But ultimately they did like build up the negotiating power as an economic block by aligning together. He's saying we need to do that and we have our leverage.

Our leverage is the sponge, you know, the Amazon. And so he's saying we need an environmental justice court. And he took inspiration from Rafael Correa in Ecuador before him, who was also quite radical and thinking about climate justice early on. And so basically he's saying we should also create a rainforest NATO. So a military alliance as well.

He wants to have a military to protect the rainforest and protect these countries who are taking risks by protecting the rainforest in that way. But he's saying this, this should be part of a mutually beneficial relationship. And obviously he says they should also fund and we like this because obviously he's, he's appealing to listening to the experts. So he's saying we need to build a scientific research center specifically dedicated to researching the Amazon. And so I think these are very concrete measures that Gustavo Pedro offered to try to come up with a new form of Amazonian sovereignty. You know, obviously he says like it would respect each country's system, but there could be some coordination fighting together. And this could be how they'd be able to make their demand to trade debt for climate action.

Ralph Levinson: Now, I agree. It's a lot to take in, but he makes a lot of really strong points.

Luc Lewitanski: The Colombian president was trying to make an appeal to the other countries saying like, it will only work if we all do this together. Let's all stop drilling.

Ralph Levinson: Right now, obviously Lula is getting some pressure. He's coming on like he's the environmental leader. If he wants to be a global environmental leader, he's going to have to step up his game. Environmentalists are noticing that he's ignoring certain ecosystems because they're not as sexy or the European Union hasn't taken, you know, the time to make the regulations. He's also doing the oil drilling. He's going to have to decide at some point if he can't push himself and his country to do more.

I want to congratulate him for what he's done. This does not take anything away from what he's doing. But yes, he could step up to the plate a little and do more.

Luc Lewitanski: Of course. And that's what Petro is pushing him on. So just to leave us with some words on this, you know, we're thinking like Lula ultimately, according to Gustavo Petzl, the Colombian president, he has also fallen prey to this capitalist system of greed, really. Pedro tells us life on the planet is telling us we must completely rethink the economic system. And so he calls for another measure of wealth. He says another measure of wealth we should consider, unlike the one that skyrocketed during the 20th century, would be something we could call a decarbonized prosperity.

So this is akin sort of to the degrowth movement. He's saying we should think about a way of looking at a country's success that has to do with its economic solvency, has to do with how well the country's doing financially, but should also weigh in as part of this measure of the country's success. Should also consider whether or not the gains are coming from carbon. Because ultimately, if an economy is producing a lot and producing a lot of carbon, then it is not a beneficial economy if you really think about it.

Ralph Levinson: And so I'm with him. I mean, these are big ideas that who knows what can happen with them. But we need big ideas. We need to at least be discussing them honestly and not fearfully. We can't just say, oh no, that's just anti-capitalist.

No, we have to stop and think, what are we really trying to get out of life? What are we really trying to get out of an economy? And a GDP is just a very limited measure, a gross domestic product. You know, in other words, the goods and services. Because the greatest good is not just what happens to be the greatest good of people who can afford it.

Luc Lewitanski: No, if anything, the richer people are, the more they pollute. I mean, you could argue there's a direct correlation.

Ralph Levinson: The more responsible they are, and ethically, they've got to think more about it. And I hope that our listeners will and vote for the right people who will at least start trying to solve problems and not create new problems.

Luc Lewitanski: Yeah, and voting is good. Actually, it just so happens there was recently a vote in Ecuador that plays into this dynamic. We saw the Colombian president Gustavo Petro. He said, guys, we need to stop drilling.

We can't be coherent in terms of climate action if we're drilling oil. And so Ecuador just had a vote on August 20th. And the results were directly in line with this demand. The people spoke up. There was a few things at stake in this election.

There was the presidential election had its first round. And it so happens, an ally of Rafael Corera, the guy who was an inspiration to our Colombian friend Gustavo Petro in their proposal for building up a military alliance to protect the Amazon and to make this demand for debt justice. So this guy was very influential in speaking these ideas early on for his presidency in Ecuador between 2007 and 2017. And so basically we have here in Colombia, Gustavo Petro picking up the torch from the Ecuadorian president.

And now it just seems like Ecuador is about to pick up the track again. They're saying, yes, let's take action. Let's stop drilling oil. The other good piece of news was they on the first round of this presidential election, Luisa Gonzalez, who's a close ally of Raul Corera, was in the prime position to win. So it seems as though in October we'll have another sympathetic government in the rainforest area to stop drilling oil following this momentum. And it's fantastic that people have spoken. This is exactly what we were talking about in terms of getting people involved. And so I think perhaps you can put some more details on this momentous electoral result. 59% of Ecuadorian people who turned up to vote on August 20th, 2023, voted for protecting this Yosunni reserve and banning the practice of oil drilling.

Ralph Levinson: This is just amazing, Luc. I'm just over the moon about this. This reserve, this Yosunni region, is thought to be one of the most biologically diverse regions in the entire world. It has just vast amounts of different species.

It's luxuriant. It's an area where there are two tribal groups that choose not to be engaged. There are other indigenous and other peoples who also rely on this environment. This is just a big win for not drilling in the Amazon. And hopefully this is something that Lula and the others will hear. And it's very much in line with what Columbia is saying. You can't just isolate one activity and say one and done.

Luc Lewitanski: Yeah, and that's the power of this multilateral systems thinking. That's the only way in which you can really think about climate issues. That's why we keep bringing this language of the species. Because it's not about these sort of national parochial identities or questions of sovereignty. It's about thinking about collective action issues. And I think on that issue, it's very interesting to see how we have this through line from, you know, the Correa Presidency of 2007 to 2017 in Ecuador. It's very interesting to see how we have this through line from, you know, the Correa Presidency of 2007 to 2017 in Ecuador to the Colombian President.

Because the proposal that the Colombian President just made is very similar to the thing that Ecuador did when he first got into office. In 2007, when he was newly elected, he offered the world to keep 850 million barrels of oil in the ground. And he said, in exchange for this, what if we created a fund for half of the value of that oil?

So he said, what if the countries of the world give Ecuador $3.6 billion in exchange for not touching the oil reserves? And obviously this bid failed. But here we see these things don't just die on the vine. These things have clearly been part of a long history of ideas and they fail until they don't, you know. And you can have the history of any major social change as being it failed many times until it didn't. You know, that's the only way in which people make a difference, you know.

We don't memorialize the gazillion times in which the problem failed. But that is part, every brick is part of that edifice to think of it in more scientific terms that might speak to you. It's that classic Newton quote, right?

No one does it alone. You're standing on the shoulders of giants. You're building on the work that's been done before you. And so here we have the Colombian President Gustavo Petro building on this sort of, again, what might seem like quite a wild proposal from the Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in 2007 to say like, hey guys, you know, I've got all this oil and it can either stay in the ground or I'm going to drill it. If I drill it, it'll make us a lot of money, but it'll be bad for like the larger collective us, like humanity. And so why didn't we do something? And obviously that didn't work then.

Ralph Levinson: But the idea of there being some economic incentive for countries to do this is not a new idea. This is not some radical idea that's holding the wealthy country's hostage. It's in all our interests. This idea of sharing the economic burden is not some pie in the sky, unprecedented idea.

Debt relief has, as Petro has suggested, is not some fantasy. We have been doing that since for the last 30 years. The United States has given almost $2 billion in debt for nature swaps involving 21 low and middle income countries. And other high income countries have kicked in another billion dollars for these kinds of efforts. And there's evidence it works.

Luc Lewitanski: So again, almost $3 billion of debt, again, a big weight sucking up the gains of the South American economies, being lifted away in order to protect nature. These are the kind of geopolitical decisions that the Ecuadorian President and the Colombian President, and even in some ways Lula, have been calling for. You have to think about cooperation and ways in which the countries who have these environmental things that we all want to safeguard can be part of a system.

Ralph Levinson: So this is not something that hasn't been done. Maybe it's something we just have to consider doing on a much larger scale. Especially when a nation like this, they didn't hold us hostage. They didn't say, give me money or we won't do it.

They just said, we are not going to destroy nature. So I applaud Ecuador. And I think we have to consider that such debt relief or other kinds of financial relief certainly has not been off the table and should not be off the table.

Luc Lewitanski: When you said it's not a hostage situation, the power dynamic is completely inverted. Yes, the countries in the global south have oil, which is a resource that if it stays in the ground could benefit us oil.

Ralph Levinson: You just had a Brooklyn accent. That's all. Anyway, go ahead.

Luc Lewitanski: Sorry. So yeah, they have this, but it's not like the leverage is being exerted by the countries in the global south. They're not asking for money, by the way. Even back in 2007, the Ecuadorian President was asking for debt relief. He's asking for forgiving debts.

And that's the through line throughout this. This sounds like some great sort of, oh my God, massive sums of money are required. But actually, the reasons countries in the rainforest region, the Amazon rainforest, South American countries, these countries, the reason why the US is in a position to forgive so much debt to them is because the US has put those countries in those situations in a lot of the time. You have to sort of think back to the power dynamic here, isn't that the southern countries are sort of holding hostage their resources? They're saying, guys, can you take the boot off us a little bit so we can breathe and not just give all our money back to you guys? In exchange for that, we will not go for the thing that would make us the most money, but destroy the planet. Like it's a trade off. They're saying, can you take your boot off us a little bit by forgiving debt?

Ralph Levinson: Well, it's not even just so that we don't have to spend the money or need the money. We want to protect our lands. We're doing something that you should be very interested in, protecting the rainforest. And it's a win-win, it really is. I think that we need to have the courage and wisdom and we have before, again, it's not unprecedented to make these kinds of things happen and to really be grateful to the people of Ecuador for looking out for our all universal heritage.

Luc Lewitanski: Right. I mean, the specifics of the region in which they voted to ban oil drilling are quite interesting. You mentioned they have a unique biodiversity.

Ralph Levinson: This park is, as I said, one of the most biologically diverse on earth and this goes for all sorts of living things, amphibians, birds, mammals, plants.

Luc Lewitanski: And I think it's interesting also to consider within the Yasuni region. This is a place because of its rich biodiversity, it had been protected. Oil companies only started drilling in the Yasuni region in 2016. And it just so happens that two thirds of that oil was going to the United States. Right.

So this is all part of an interconnected system. The Yasuni region was being pillaged and it was pillaged for half a decade. And thankfully the great people of Ecuador put a stop to it by getting out there and casting their votes. And that is sometimes all that you can do. And voting is good, but as we've seen, you cannot tackle these issues of international cooperation on a purely local basis. You have to have some coordination, which is exactly what the Colombian president was hoping that this conference, the ACTO conference in Belom in August 2023 could have become.

Ralph Levinson: Even though you can't tackle it totally on a local basis, think globally, act locally. We as individuals have to act within the frameworks we have. And I think we have to entertain big answers for big questions, big responses to big problems.

And what shape that's going to take is going to be something that we're going to have to hammer out. We have to celebrate the progress that we are making. There has been progress on climate on various levels.

We have new industries and specifically in the rainforest. This is a real thing. I mean, we're all in it together, but some of us are suffering a lot more than others. Some of us have climate bunkers. And those who are suffering more than others aren't necessarily the ones who are polluting the most. As a matter of fact, they as a rule are not the ones who are polluting the most.

Luc Lewitanski: So next time on Your Planet, Your Health, on that lovely note of thinking about these big thorny problems and the problems of collective action, I mean, these are all nice philosophical notes to think about. And ultimately, I hope that, you know, if you happen to be a South American leader, perhaps you can see it in your heart to act and unite with the rainforest countries. Obviously, you know, I'm just saying, like, it's interesting to think about the only way to tackle this is by working with many different leaders. And the fact that there is such consensus on the base, like, people see the effects of climate change right now. I mean, there has been a lot of efforts to try and obfuscate the science, which we'll be talking about a lot more next time. But this is still, ultimately, it's been an uphill battle. But people get it.

People see the impacts of the climate. And ultimately, now it's a question of, like, getting the politicians to organize. And the only way you can do that is by having pressure from below. So perhaps if you're not a South American leader, you do not have a part of the rainforest in your country, you can still be part of that base putting pressure, you know, and, well, that's still something.

Ralph Levinson: It's something. And as you said, there is a very good question as to why we're not further along on all this. And that answer is the oil companies. So we're going to talk about that next.

Luc Lewitanski: Stay planet, stay healthy.

Ralph Levinson: Let's stay planet, stay healthy, and we'll talk soon.